Obama signals he may allow rich to keep their tax breaks.
Is this some special negotiating strategy that I’m unfamiliar with? Admit willingness to compromise before negotiations even begin. What idiot came up with that idea?
This is one of the best issues for Democrats. Tax breaks for millionaires/billionaires, is a winning strategy. Even time the Republicans say “tax breaks for all;” repeat “tax breaks for all billionaires.” And repeat, and repeat, …
Keep it simple, the Republicans are giving tax breaks to their wealthy friends. Hammer them over the head with that slogan from every corner of the Democratic Party, from the Congress, from the White House, and from the pundits. The Presidency is also a political office and Obama has failed on this aspect.
This President has not been partisan enough. A person who is not partisan does not have strong principles. Maybe that’s the answer, Obama is too much of a pragmatist and lacks the principles that set great leaders apart.
H/T The RAWSTORY
-David Drumm (Nal)
Jill,
I’m going to have to join with others on this thread (no matter how self-congratulatory this sentiment is) and say that Turley’s blog commenters are some of the most resistant to reflexive Obamapology anywhere in the blogosphere. I can’t recall an instance where someone standing up for a “bad” Obama policy or tactic was not shot down, sometimes mercilessly. One might take issue with some other aspects of this blog (or its commenters) but I think your particular charge isn’t substantive.
Buddha,
Off topic: Man was the soundtrack for the movie version poorly chosen. I know the logic behind it, but things don’t always work in practice like they do in concept.
http://noir.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aHA2ayvquh4g&pos=1 The economy created over 150,0000 jobs last month. Maybe things will improve for Obama. He is not the one that drove the economy off the cliff. My concern is that his message isn’t clear. He needs to hire some new people who are capable of communicating.
From the Urban Dictionary:
“punked
allowing to let yourself be walked on to avoid confrontation.
I dont say anything because all it will do is start a fight. thats being punked!”
The light is finally dawning on even die-hards that there’s a spine problem with Obama. After being “shellacked” (to use his words) by the Repubs, now he’s asking them over to dinner. Unbelievable.
Obama is an illustration of how intelligence is necessary but not sufficient to be a good president.
Buddha,
I think your grandfather was right on this occassion and several other occasions you have mentioned his name.
I voted for some Republicans and some Democrats this time ( I voted for all Democrats in 2008) but not one of the people for whom I voted did I like or really wanted to see them in office. I find myself voting against the worst scoundrels while giving my approval to regular run-of-the-mill scoundrels. I am almost ashamed that I voted for some of the people; however, if I did not vote, I would really be ashamed of myself. The nearest place for me to turn in or mail my early ballot is a 2-hour roundtrip drive and voting for or against propositions (10 this midterm) is increasingly the main impetus for me to vote.
Or to go all Rorschach . . .
“You see, Doctor, God didn’t kill that little girl. Fate didn’t butcher her and destiny didn’t feed her to those dogs. If God saw what any of us did that night he didn’t seem to mind. From then on I knew… God doesn’t make the world this way. We do.”
Just like God didn’t order either torture or insist assassination without due process of citizens is either ethical or Constitutional.
Bush, Cheney and Obama did that.
They made the world this way. And what you put out in the world always comes back to you – one way or another.
Bob,
I should also point out that while deserves got nothing to do with objective reality, it’s got everything to do with justice, an abstract goal we seek and the Founders sought to implement. Or are you going to contend that equity has no relationship to justice? Just because something isn’t doesn’t mean we as a society shouldn’t strive for it. DNA didn’t creep out of the seas (or the pond of scum as you like to call it) without striving to do so.
Reality is what we make of it.
Bob,
Except I’m better looking, funnier and smarter than Dennis Miller.
Bob,Esq., Gadfly? LOL. OK, I’ll keep that word in mind:-)
Damn! You folks sure have been busy here. I write i the comment box then spell check and edit, and edit and spell check some more. And don’t edit nearly enough. and have to make a snack and feed the cats. then I post and here y’all have added 20 postings. I’m always about 20 postings behind.
—–
Jill: “I want to add something here. When I first came to this blog I believed I had found a group of like minded people–people who believed in the rule of law,… I never believed people on this blog would approve of such horrific actions against other people and against our own nation’s laws. The sense of betrayal in learning otherwise is something I cannot describe.”
******
You’re not correct in your assessment. ‘Favor’ is contextural regarding Obama. Having Obama in office is better than having McCain/Palin. Voting for a bad Democratic candidate is very often better than voting for a bad Repubiclan or teabagger. Based only on the Democratic propensity of Democratic propensity to vote for a more liberal position on social issues. Blue dogs and that ilk aren’t worth the powder it takes to blow them away.
It’s the lesser of two evils and the entire poitical landscape in America is boiled down to two evils. ‘They” have us exactly where they want us because they aren’t the pliticians, politicians are the handmaidens of the ruling class.
We (as a nation, IMO) aren’t making decisions over political philosophies anymore: this is public, in your face, class warfare mixed with a big dose of theocracy. The only thing that wil save the country is a living wage for a lot of people and the deck is stacked against that. A bill to remove TAX BRREAKS from companies that outsource jobs can’t even get out of the Senate.
As long as large numbers of the population have no economic stability or even the prospect of economic stability people can not look beyond the next pay check or welfare check. A lack of economic stability insures a short-term view-point and ever more radical schemes (or faith in ever more radical political solutions) to hold on to what one has. A majority of people are today operating at the lowest level of need in a social construct; they are preoccupied with basic survival needs and until those are met they have no practical ability to think or act beyond that level.
It’s ignorent and reactionary but it drives the political decision making of most people. The only question on most people’s minds come election time is who will oppress me most egregiously, who will leave no two stones standing together, which party will likely leave me more scraps by not taking even more? It makes them easy to manipulate because ironically, they, as individules, are willing to take from others to maintain what they percieve or need as their own. That’s what happens when the state of a society approaches the perfect state of nature.
Make no mistake, there are monsters out there and they are devouring this nation. They started 30 years ago and their rapashiousness has only grown. It’s going to get worse. We now have a unique situation, we have a new political party, the Tea Party, that has made gains in one election cycle that in a Parlimentary Democracy wold have been considered astonishing, monumental, revolutionary. Their politicians (many of whom were elected) campaigned by flaunting their ignorence and bigotry, promising to make children, CHILDREN!, carry their rapist’s babies, and erasing the line between church and state.
They say they’re bi-partisan and all inclusive but they run Republican, vote Republican and those that have been elected will caucus Republican. The Republican party considers them their base and that base of the Republican party is now made up of people that expouse the ugliest and most repugnant ideas a society can hold. They are though fiscal conservatives, enemies of social justice and the social safety net. They are ameniable to the economic policies of the Republican party and the most abusive economic policies of the Democratic party.
They and the most radicaly conservative incumbant Republicans or Democrats are not going to be able to destroy the social programs they would like to (quickly) IMO but they will make inroads. This unholy triity will be able to maintain and expand the most odious of the economic policies currently in place and come up with more. The ruling class is going to be just fine.
Choosing the lesser of two evils is not to excuse or advocate any bad policy on the part of whoever happens to be that lesser of the two. It’s simply an acknowledgement that one evil is lesser than another. The shame isn’t that people lobby (conversationally) for votes for an incumbent murdering, torturing bastard (Obama) as opposed to a candidate that will be a murdering, torturing basdard and promises to kick it up a notch by trashing Social Security (McCain). That’s not advocacy for murder and torture. That’s damage supression. The shame is that we are so reduced morally as a nation that those are the choices.
There are a couple of people here that advocate the odious economic policies I refer to above. But to my knowledge no regular poster advocates the torture and murder and other depraved things you accuse us of. There may be a couple. I could come up with a couple of likely suspects but that’s just prejudice on my part. Certainly not the liberals on this blawg. If you are applyig a litmus test along the lines of ‘every mention of the Obama administration should begin with a castigation regarding x and x and x programs’ then you’re on the wrong track. No one writes or talks that way; even if I were so inclined I’d restrain myself because it’s tiring to do and tiring to hear/read.
To paint with a brush as broad as you have is without foundation. I am concerned that you have let your deep dissapoint and unhappiness (and anger) at the President to extend into personal (albiet cyber-based) relationships in an inappropriate way. Its unfair and an insult.
I thought Bush was dragging us into the Twilight Zone but he doesn’t hold a candle to Obama.
He caves before he is even asked to.
Usually in a leader you look for a tilt to the fight side of fight or flight. Obama spooks faster than a covey of Quail.
He is unbelievable.
How can his voters stand up for him and his positions when he has not positions. Except to repeatedly insult and demean the people who made the difference in his election.
Buddha,
I didn’t say it was likely that Obama would do what I suggest, but one can dream.
Bob,Esq.,
I’m familiar with Buddha’s rants. I often agree with him–but not always. I prefer not to have to guess what you or someone else may be trying to tell me in a comment. I think that’s how misunderstandings often occur. I like it when people get straight to the point.
Buddah I think the “torch bearing mobs” are already here, and they are the tea party.
Elaine,
Do you see now why I suggested asking Buddha what he thinks?
He rants like Dennis Miller; before Dennis became a right wing suckup.
Buddha: “Any leader that does what Bush/Cheney and now Obama needs to be held accountable by We the People”
Buddha, I wasn’t adopting anything Jill mentioned; sans her comments about needing to view Obama in a normative fashion.
What you understand, unlike Slartibartfast or rafflaw above, is that the law, and the categorical imperative, does not concern itself with ‘appearances.’ It does not play favorites or concern itself with who feels who ‘deserves’ what.
Bush & Cheney instituted tyrannical policies and Obama has since embraced them and took further legal actions to expand them.
Slarti would cry out that Obama doesn’t deserve such criticism — since he’s facing off against a bad economy and trying to build us a house.
However, if we were to anthropomorphise the categorical imperative using modern cinematic vernacular, the judgment against the three of them would look something like this:
Little Bill Daggett: I don’t deserve this… to die like this. I was building a house.
Will Munny: Deserve’s got nothin’ to do with it.
To view it any other way is to simply lie to yourself.
“Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others.” — Dostoevsky
raff,
In re Holder and GOP led impeachments against Obama or his flunkies: I can only hope, but Holder and Obama’s spinelessness to this point is hardly encouraging.